For this month’s highlights from The American Civil War Collection, 1860-1922: From the American Antiquarian Society, we have selected two rare works: a Southern almanac and an imprint on the plight of Union veterans made deaf consequent to their service.

Historical Register and Confederates Assistant to National Independence: Containing a discovery for the preservation of Butter, together with other valuable Recipes, and important information for the Soldier, and the People in general throughout the Confederate States of America (1862)

By H.W.R. Jackson

Mr. Jackson authored several books in passionate defense of the Confederate States of America, all of which portrayed the genteel but aggressive determination of the Southerners to triumph over the corrupt, lawless Yankees. The inclusion of the making butter in his title reflects his whole point that the South need no longer depend on the products of the North in order to prosper even in wartime. The imprint is structured somewhat like an almanac presenting statistics and accounts of the war intermixed with recipes, remedies, and agricultural advice.

The November release of Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922: From the Library Company of Philadelphia includes an Englishman’s observations on the Atlantic slave trade, a Scot’s concerns for the emancipated slaves in the West Indies, and reflections on the American abolitionist movement and slavery by the third baronet of Wraxall.

Narrative of a Voyage to the Southern Atlantic Ocean (1834)

By William Henry Bayley Webster

William Henry Bayley Webster served aboard the HMS Chanticleer during her scientific expedition in the South Atlantic from 1828 to 1830. Webster, the ship’s surgeon, recorded the manners and customs of various peoples he encountered traveling along the Atlantic coasts of Africa and South America. He makes notes of finding slavery in South America “at the Cape in its mildest form” and at Rio “in all its plenitude” but after arriving at Maranham in northern Brazil he offers more detail, writing:

Pearl S. Buck inhabited many roles over the course of her life. Following the publication of her bestselling novel The Good Earth in 1931 she was widely known as a writer who crafted a compelling narrative of life in a Chinese village. After she won a Pulitzer Prize for that book in 1932, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938, she was regarded as a celebrity and a public intellectual as well.

To many women she was a beacon of the equal rights movement; for many mixed-race children she was quite simply a savior. To the Chinese among whom she lived she was Sai Zhenzhu (賽珍珠, Chinese for “Precious Pearl”). The communists feared and hated her, but her reputation has since been reappraised and her homes in China are now tourist attractions.

Among the extraordinarily rare works in Early American Imprints, Series II: Supplement 3 from the American Antiquarian Society are these illustrated items: a compendium of Irish humor and songs, “a pathetic tale” for juveniles which ends happily, and a chapbook celebrating autumn in verse and prose.

The New Irish Jest and Song Book: Being a Collection of Jests, Blunders, Songs and Witty Sayings from the Latest Publications (1803)

In his preface to this unique imprint, the author enlarges on the word “blunder.”

An Irish blunder is defined to be “a laughable confusion of ideas,” which, when delivered with all the vivacity and particular gesticulation natural to the country, and with that tone of voice, commonly called the brogue, has infinitely a more humorous effect, than the dull, vapid mistakes of a plodding Englishman, or a pawky Scotchman.

You may have heard of the “Pentagon Papers” from the Vietnam War era. More recently, the “Panama Papers” exposed the use of that country’s legal and financial institutions for tax evasion. But what about the “Pumpkin Papers?” In the spirit of the season, we’ll shed some light on these documents that were used to keep the specter of communism at bay following World War II.

In 1950, the admission of the “Pumpkin Papers” as evidence of espionage against Alger Hiss led to his conviction for perjury, resulting in a five-year federal prison sentence. But perhaps as significant, the conviction of Alger Hiss brought U.S. Representative Richard M. Nixon to national prominence, as seen in these clippings from the Readex digital edition of the Washington Evening Star.

In the Wu Xing—the Chinese conception of the phases or transformation of energy—there are five elemental states, symbolized by wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. In this month’s highlights from Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS) Reports, 1957-1994, we’re going to explore the physical geography of that vast land guided by those categories.

In keeping with feng shui principles, which the Wu Xing model also informs, we hope that our brief review will prove pleasing to the reader, and will manifest expansive characteristics of human understanding.

Articles on Natural Geography in South Communist China

Shanghai, 1957.

Earth and water here, with separate articles on the Han Kiang Delta, the Pearl River Delta, coastal geography, “red earth” (chiefly iron), and sandstone.

Curated from the Library Company of Philadelphia’s acclaimed African American history archive, African Americans and Reconstruction: Hope and Struggle, 1865-1883, is a newly released digital collection of searchable books, pamphlets, and speeches. Its coverage begins with the conclusion of the Civil War and spans eighteen of the most formative years in African American history.

Reconstruction marked an end to slavery and a beginning to the enfranchisement of African Americans. Full citizenship, voting rights, land ownership, employment opportunities, and political participation were only some of the significant gains enjoyed, in theory, by African Americans during this period. Although these rights were granted by amendments to the U.S. Constitution and federal legislation, they were not, in practice, universally protected at local levels.

Using this new collection’s “Suggested Searches” feature, students and other researchers can explore these revealing primary source materials with ease.

This month’s release of imprints from The American Civil War Collection, 1860-1922: From the American Antiquarian Society includes two imprints reflecting on events in Richmond, Virginia, following the war. Both publications express sympathetic views of the Confederacy. On a lighter note we focus on a colorfully illustrated picture book for children from the Civil War era.

Robert Edward Lee: An Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Monument to General Robert Edward Lee at Richmond, Virginia, May 29, 1890, by Archer Anderson (1890)

At a time when memorials to the Confederacy and her most prominent soldiers and politicians are under attack by demands to remove them, it may be timely to consider the impetus and emotion that fueled the erection of these memorials in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The end of Reconstruction ushered in the Jim Crow era. Many of the monuments constructed toward the end of the 19th century were as much a celebration of white supremacy as a permanent memory of the war.

Contemporary Americans are not so likely as Archer Anderson, the author of this address, to assert that:

The aims of the Committee of Liberation of the Peoples of Russia are: the overthrow of Stalin’s tyranny, the liberation of the peoples of Russia from the Bolshevik system, and the restitution of those rights to the peoples of Russia which they fought for and won in the people’s revolution of 1917.

Andrei Vlasov, The Prague Manifesto, November 14, 1944

It’s November 14, 1944, and an armed uprising against Stalinist terror and Bolshevism is in progress. Its participants number well into the six figures and have been formed into an actual army. Its leader is Andrei Vlasov, a former general in the Red Army who had fought the Germans at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. Now he is allied with them, but only just.

Vlasov makes his way to the microphone in a crowded ballroom in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and declaims a manifesto excoriating Soviet communist oppression. He speaks as a pragmatic man of firm convictions and steady purpose, and he gives a bravura performance, a definitive example of speaking truth to power. But he is also a man divided in his loyalties.

an admonitory story for children who are inclined to “a meddling disposition”

an articulate argument against introducing the British factory system in the United States

a heavily illustrated book of the “history of birds in the air” in rhyme.

The Story of Charles Maitland; or, The Dangers of a Meddling Disposition (1806)

This rare work tells the story of Charles Maitland, a naughty boy unable to refrain from meddling in other peoples’ affairs. Through this behavior Charles “might (by his meddling disposition) have made a breach between two families who were very much united, and lived on the most friendly terms, if he had had to deal with people of less discernment and good sense.”